Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) research grant MO 3010/3-1 Operando investigation of resistive switching in electron transparent lamellae of HfOx based RRAM devices
Resistive random access memory (RRAM) switches, also called memristors, are promising candidates for fast non-volatile memory. Among the transition metal oxides serving as the functional material, HfOx and TaOx have attracted high interest due to their performance and proven compatibility with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. Despite the huge amount of work done in this research area, an atomistic understanding of the switching process is still much debated. It is a so far an unrealized dream of many scientists in the field, to directly study with atomic resolution the structural and electronic changes in the functional materials occurring in the different stages of the switching operation (formation, set and reset). Based on our very recently established process to in situ electrically contact and operate an electron transparent focused ion beam (FIB) prepared lamella cut from a RRAM structure, we are now in the position to propose a previously not possible set of experiments.
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